


Buried in Water

by Balder12



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s08e21 The Great Escapist, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Cuddling, Sam's Trials
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-8.21, Dean has to go on a hunt, and Cas takes care of Sam during a particularly nasty bout of Trials-related sickness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Buried in Water

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a [prompt](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/608520.html?thread=3495944#t3495944) by [shangrilada](http://shangrilada.livejournal.com/) at the [Oh_Sam H/C Fic & Art Celebration](http://ohsam.livejournal.com/608520.html). Some people believe that in baptism the person's sins die and are "buried in water," and he is reborn as a child of God. That seems relevant to Sam's interests at the moment.

“Dean, if a busload of elementary school kids drowns because you were back here playing nursemaid, you’ll find out how very not helpless I am when I kick your ass,” Sam said. 

A pied piper was wreaking havoc in Nebraska and Dean was threatening to let it slide.  Sam never thought he’d live to see the day that he had to do everything short of club Dean over the head and shove him in the driver’s seat to get him to go on a hunt.

It wasn’t like Sam wanted to ride along.  He was ready to admit that he wasn’t going do anybody any good slogging through a flooded quarry right now.  That didn’t mean that Dean had to be grounded.  Especially when there was nothing for him to do around the bunker but worry, anyway.  Sam was going to be exactly as sick whether Dean hovered over him or not, and after 24 hours in some sort of celestial coma Cas had woken up and assured them both that he was “probably not dying” of his stomach wound.  For the past day he’d been lurking around the library, one arm curled protectively in front of him, staring at walls and answering their questions with non sequiturs and enigmatic silence.  So pretty much standard-issue Cas behavior. 

There wasn’t an actual fight.  Sam just followed Dean around all morning explaining why he was right in his most reasonable tone of voice, while Dean cheerfully ignored every word he said.  Dean knew how much Sam hated that.  At some point their non-fight made its way into the library and roused Cas from his apathetic reverie long enough for him to agree that Dean should save the thirty-odd missing children in Omaha. 

“I’ll watch over Sam,” he said.

“I don’t need to be watched over.”  Sam didn’t know why he bothered.  No one was listening. 

In the end Dean crumbled before the force of their combined willpower.  On his way out the door he pointed at Cas.  “You,” he said, “take care of him.”  He pointed at Sam.  Cas tracked Dean’s gesture but said nothing.  Sam rolled his eyes.

An hour after Dean left Sam realized it was May 1 and half-regretted talking him into the trip.  Tomorrow was the unluckiest day of the year.  He told himself that he was being superstitious, but he was pretty sure the situation had crossed the line from superstition to common sense the third time someone went to Hell on his birthday.  So instead he told himself that if the universe wanted to fuck with him it would do it whether Dean was on a hunt or not.  That sounded more like the truth.

**************************************************

Sam accumulated layers of clothing over the course of the day.  By 4pm he had on a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, a hoodie, and a blanket.  He was still shivering.  He couldn’t imagine any greater happiness than submerging himself in a hot bath and never getting out.  The only thing that stopped him was that he wasn’t willing to take a break from researching the third Trial, and he couldn’t bear the thought of risking a rare book in the tub.

Sam found it easier to work without Dean radiating waves of anxiety, constantly interrupting with stew, thermometers, and hands to the forehead.  Cas’s silent presence was soothing once Sam accepted that he was content to sit in one corner of the library and stare at nothing—or at least nothing visible to the human eye—for hours at a time. 

In spite of his quiet withdrawal, Cas seemed to have taken Dean’s parting order more seriously than Sam had.  Every couple of hours he got up and brought Sam a glass of water.  “You should drink,” Cas said the first time.  “The fever will dehydrate you.”  Cas was right, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to do it.  His throat was so raw that drinking hurt, but mostly he felt a visceral queasiness that told him the minute he swallowed anything, even water, he’d be retching it back up.  A row of full water glasses lined up over the course of the day, sitting by his elbow in silent reproach.

Toward evening the obligatory water glass was accompanied by a sandwich.  Sam picked it up cautiously and examined it.  Peanut butter and banana.  The construction seemed competent, and it caught Sam off guard.  He wasn’t sure why he’d assumed that Cas was incapable of something so basic:  even when he was mad Cas had made Sam a totally acceptable sandwich.  The thought of that pitiful, broken creature made Sam’s chest tighten.  He felt like he should try to eat, if only for Cas’s sake, but as soon as he brought the sandwich close enough to smell the peanut butter his stomach flipped over and he tossed it back down on the plate.   After that, just looking at it made him so sick that he had to set it on the table behind him to get it out of sight. 

It was three days since he’d last choked down a little of Dean’s stew, and almost a day and a half since he’d had water.  It was hardly a choice, and yet he felt an odd pride at the thought, like it was an uninterrupted series of wins on his scorecard.  Medieval mystics fasted to bring themselves closer to God.  Maybe Sam’s inability to eat was part of his purification.  The thought comforted him.    

A headache gradually tightened its grip on his skull, and the lore came together in unlikely combinations he was sure he hadn’t read right.  White spots gathered in his vision.  He laid his head on the table, but the angle pressed a knife into his lungs.  He leaned back.  His equilibrium was shot and for an instant he thought he would fall, but the position opened up his chest and he gradually relaxed into it.  Multicolored amoebas of light chased each other across the darkness of the distant ceiling.  They probably had whole life stories, if only Sam had the patience to work them out.  He just needed to rest his eyes for a minute.

***********************************************************   

Sam was climbing stairs.  The stairwell was as bright and cold as death, filled with a light louder than sound that pierced his eyes and splintered into shards of pain inside his skull.  His lungs burned with the need for air, but he couldn’t stop to catch his breath.  He had to carry the weight on his back all the way to the top.  The stairs unfolded before him, infinite and identical.   

The dream decayed gradually.  For a long time half of Sam was still in the stairwell on his forced march while the other half was lying in bed.  He was relieved when he finally opened his eyes and the imaginary light went off, leaving him in quiet darkness. 

He looked around.  He didn’t remember checking into this room, and it wasn’t like any motel he’d ever seen.  Stark and empty, without windows or a back door for escape.  It might almost have been a cell.

And there was only one bed.  Where was Dean?  Dread mounted in his chest.  There were a limited number of reasons why Sam would check into a single. 

“Dean?” Sam called softly.  No answer.  He started to say his brother’s name again, but he was hit by a wracking cough that made his whole body lock up, trying to force something out of his chest that wouldn’t come.  Pain flipped the switch on a series of associations:  Trials, Bat Cave, Omaha.

He realized he was still fully dressed, boots and all, like he’d been put to bed by someone who had only the vaguest notion of what ‘put to bed’ entailed.  Cas.  If Cas had carried him here, Sam was happy he’d missed it.  It would’ve been awkward as hell.   

Sam took off his boots, but he couldn’t find the energy to undress.  Besides, changing into his sleep clothes would require getting naked, and he was too intolerably cold to consider it.  He liked his shirt, sweatshirt, and hoodie exactly where they were.  He sank against the mattress and willed himself to go to sleep, but lying on his back felt like trying to breath uphill.  He propped himself up and the pressure on his chest eased, but he was still shivering uncontrollably.  He burrowed under the covers and curled up in a ball.  As long as he didn’t move outside his tiny perimeter of body heat the shivering stopped.         

He still couldn’t sleep.  The bedroom made him tense.  As much as he hated to admit it a motel would have felt more like home.  He never thought he’d miss the flamingos and leopard print of a shitty roadside joint, but the tackiest décor in the world would have been friendlier than the blank wall in front of him.  And he definitely missed the TV.  He’d spent the vast majority of his life sleeping in earshot of Dean, and the soft sound of his breathing was Sam’s white noise machine.  When Dean wasn’t there Sam fell asleep with the murmur of old sitcoms for company.  The Bat Cave wasn’t rigged for cable, though.  Sam had already promised himself that as soon as he felt better he was climbing on top of it and chunking down a satellite, but for now he was stuck with silence.

After an hour of listening to the old mechanical digital clock beside his bed rustle every time the minute flipped—he could still hear it, even after he threw his extra pillow over the top—he went back out to the library, blankets trailing behind him.  If he couldn’t sleep he might as well work.

The library was dark, and when Sam saw the figure standing by the table he instinctively went for the knife tucked in the back of his jeans.

“Sam?”  Cas said. 

Sam put the knife back and flipped on the light. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.  Why are you standing around in the dark?”

“I can see in the dark.”  That wasn’t an answer, but Sam wasn’t in the mood to push.  He sat down at the table, mostly because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand. 

“You should sleep,” Cas said.

“The harder I try the harder it is.  I need to do something else for a bit.  Maybe we could . . .”  He didn’t know how to finish that sentence. He almost never hung out with Cas when Dean wasn’t there.  What did Dean and Cas do when they were alone?  Talk about their feelings?  Play Twister?  Sam couldn’t imagine.      

“. . . play chess,” Sam decided.  There was a beautiful set in the library and he’d never been able to convince Dean to play with him.

Cas didn’t say yes, but he sat down and the board was suddenly on the table between them.  Or at least Sam thought it was sudden.  It was possible he’d zoned out for a minute. 

So they played.  Cas watched in silence while Sam deliberated over his moves, and was quick and decisive when his own turn came around.  He didn’t make conversation.  At first Sam felt the pressure to think of something—anything—to say.  He’d known how to talk to people once, back at Stanford, but he was so rusty now that he couldn’t even remember what small talk was supposed to sound like.  Cas didn’t seem to expect it though, and after a while Sam felt grateful that he didn’t have to try.  It was so much easier than human company.  

Sam struggled to focus on the game, but his mind wandered to the person who’d carved the pieces—a Man of Letters?—and invented vague, half-formed stories based on the state of play.  Cas’s black queen was Crowley, pushing into new territory and dominating the board, while Sam’s white queen was Meg, always on the defensive.  Bishops had white eyes and knights had red.  Pawns were the disposable sort of black-eyed bastards.  Sam’s king was Lucifer, of course, and Cas’s . . . the metaphor kind of broke down there.  Cas killed off Meg’s army one by one, and their bodies accumulated in front of him. 

“Checkmate,” Cas said. 

Sam studied the board.  “You’re good.”  He’d played a lot of chess back when he’d had people to play with.  He’d even been in the chess club at one high school, a fact that Dean had never let him live down.  Looking at the layout of the board he felt pretty sure that Cas hadn’t just beaten him because of the delirium.

“I am,” Cas said.  He sounded sad.  He turned the white queen over in his hand.  “Angels have to be taught new skills.  We learn much faster than humans, but we learn.  Someone taught me this.  We must have spent hours playing this game together.  I don’t remember him.”

Sam wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about that, and Cas was unreadable.  “I didn’t know angels could forget,” he said carefully.

Cas set down the chess piece.  “Nor did I.” 

Cas hadn’t told them how he’d gotten shot beyond ‘Crowley took the tablet,’ but Sam was sure it had something to do with this.  He started to ask, ‘What happened to you?’ but he only got as far as “What . . . ?” before he was hit by a coughing fit.

When Sam pulled his hand away there was blood on it.  He staggered out of the chair and headed toward the bathroom.  “I’ll be right back,” he said.  Or at least he tried to say it.  It came out sounding more like choking noises.

“Are you—“

Sam flapped the hand that wasn’t bloody behind him dismissively.  “I’m fine.”

He could barely see where he was going through the gray mist encroaching on his vision.  He slammed his shoulder into the wall halfway down the hall and clung to it for a minute, seriously considering the possibility of just dropping down and curling up on the floor.  He wasn’t sure how far away the bathroom was, or even if he was headed in the right direction.  In the end he forced himself to keep going.  The floor was too nice to bleed on. 

The bathroom was punishingly bright.  His head throbbed.  He grabbed the sink to keep himself upright and spit blood.  He was about to rinse out his mouth when another bout of coughing hit him.  It felt like something in his chest was tearing.  The blood kept coming, too red in the white sink, until he began to believe that maybe he’d keep coughing up clots of lung and unnameable bits until there was nothing left inside him.

“Sam.”

Sam half-choked in his surprise, which started another coughing fit.  When he was done he spit more blood into the sink and said, “I’m fine.  Go away.”

“You left a bloody handprint in the hallway.”

Sam could barely hear Cas over the roar of the light.  It pushed itself inside all the empty places in his head.  “I’ll deal with it before Dean gets back.”  He thought maybe he was shouting.

“That wasn’t my point.”  Sam’s grip on the sink slipped and he scrabbled to regain his hold.  Cas grabbed him around the waist by one arm and guided him to the floor.   He said something as he did it, but all Sam heard through the light was “ . . . probably sit down.”         

“Can you turn down the light?  It’s really loud,” Sam said.  Cas didn’t move from his place beside Sam, but the light faded until it no longer crowded Sam’s consciousness. 

Sam gestured in the direction of the sink.  He hardly knew what he was trying to say, but Cas seemed to get the point.  “You can cough up blood just as well down here.”  Sam would have laughed, but he was afraid it would set him off again.

Sam leaned back against Cas’s arm and rested his head on the rim of the tub.  The cold tile hurt his skin,  even through his layers of clothes, but sitting down made the white spots retreat from his vision.  He wrung his hands restlessly, trying to work out the tingling.  He wanted to shed his skin and crawl away.

“Here, drink this.”  Cas held up a water bottle that seemed to come out of nowhere and probably had.  Sam’s mouth tasted like blood but his stomach lurched at the thought of drinking anything.  Besides, what if this was part of the Trial?  Maybe he wasn’t supposed to eat or drink.  Why else make it so hard to do?  Sam pushed Cas’s hand away and shook his head.  Cas looked concerned, but didn’t insist.

Sam focused on his breathing.  He had to keep it shallow to avoid the bed of razors waiting at the bottom of his lungs, but he wasn’t getting enough air.  His small, trapped breaths threatened him with a claustrophobia unrelated to the size of the room.  He grounded himself on the slow rise and fall of Cas’s chest against his side, a counter rhythm to his own rapid pace. 

He almost felt like he had the situation under control when he made the mistake of inhaling too deeply and the tearing in his chest started all over again.  Cas held him up while he coughed and wiped the blood from his mouth with a towel.  If he was scared by Sam’s condition he hid it better than Dean.

 When it was over Sam slumped against Cas’s shoulder.  It seemed preferable to falling into his lap.  Cas held out the bottle again, and this time he didn’t let Sam push it away.

“You need water.”  Sam still didn’t take it. Cas sighed.  “Perhaps I should take you to a hospital.”

Sam shook his head against Cas’s sleeve.  “A hospital can’t cure a divine trial.”

“It can cure dehydration.”

Sam doubted there was anything medical science could do to improve his condition.  And what if it did? Was that cheating?  It felt like cheating.  God created the Trials before hospitals existed. They were meant to be done the hard way.

“We go to the hospital they’ll just think I have ebola and put me in quarantine.”  Which wasn’t Sam’s main concern, but was probably also true.

“You can’t go on like this, and I can’t heal you.  Surely I could find a doctor willing to come here discretely and give you fluids.  For money?”  Cas said the word “money” the way Sam would have said “fairy gold,” like he felt ridiculous even talking about it.  Maybe Cas was scared after all.

“It’s okay,” Sam said.  “Really.  I’m okay.  I mean, it sucks and it hurts, but I’m not afraid.  I chose this.”

A thought struck him.  “What day is it? Is it tomorrow?”  Cas looked at him like he was speaking in tongues.  “The date, Cas.  Is it after midnight?”

Cas got a faraway look and Sam imagined him scrolling through the angelic equivalent of a calendar app.  So strange and so mundane. 

“It’s 3:22am on May 2.  Why?”

“I’m thirty.”  Suddenly his birthday didn’t feel like bad luck.  It felt like a sign, like the numbers rolling over on the odometer.  He squeezed Cas’s arm.  “Listen to me.  I’ve been sick my whole life.  Unclean.  These trials are purifying me.” He nodded at the bloody towel.  “I have to get it out of me.  All the blood I drank, all the demon blood in me, it has to come back up.  I don’t need a doctor.  I don’t need an IV.  I’m not sick.  I’m healthy.  For the first time.”  As Sam said the words he knew they were true, and he looked up at Cas for confirmation.  He was an angel, surely he would know. 

Sam didn’t get the affirmation he was expecting.  Cas stared at him in silence until he wanted to shrink away. 

“What?” Sam said when he couldn’t take it anymore. 

Cas picked up the towel.  “That’s not demon blood,” he said quietly.

Sam looked at the bloodstains and felt queasy as his sense of reality shifted.  “It is.  I know it is.  I’m going to be clean.”

Cas lapsed back into silence.  Sam had the sense that he’d withdrawn to wherever it was he’d been during all those long hours in the empty library.  “Just say it,” Sam said.  “Whatever it is.”    

Cas looked over at him like he’d forgotten Sam was there. “When you completed each of the Trials you became the conduit for divine energy, and it shredded you at a molecular level.  The same way your eyes would burn if you saw my true form.  It’s not a sacrament, it’s just more than the human body can bear.” 

Sam recoiled.  “You don’t know that.  You can’t.”

“I can.  I do.”  Cas was still quiet, but there was an edge to his voice.  “Just as I know that if you don’t drink this water or find a doctor to inject it into you, you’re going to die.  Possibly before Dean returns.  Certainly before you complete the third Trial.  Just as I know that whatever option you choose God won’t care because God has abandoned us all.” 

Sam wasn’t sure how much of that was bitterness and how much was cold fact, but he felt the warm glow of enlightenment—wishful thinking?  delirium?—that had sustained him in the days since Colorado bleed away.  He needed to get out of this room.  He tried to get up, but he stood too fast and a net of pain closed around his skull. The world went white and he came to slumped against the tub, right back where he started.  He decided to stay there.  A dramatic exit lost its flare if Cas had to carry him out.

Sam dropped his head against the back of the tub and stared at the ceiling.  “So I’m still an abomination?”  He meant it as sarcasm but it came out sounding like an honest question.

“What you’re doing is just as important and just as good.”  Yes, then.  And maybe that shouldn’t change anything.  What mattered—what _should_ matter—were the countless people who’d be saved if the gates of Hell closed.  It would alter the whole course of human history.  It was probably vain and selfish that he’d ever thought about the mission as his own private baptism by fire.  But he had, and right now he was having a hard time remembering that he cared about the fate of people he’d never met. 

After a minute Cas said, “Do you know how many times I’ve been purified?” 

There was a long silence before Sam realized the question wasn’t rhetorical.  “No.”

“Neither do I.  I’ve murdered children.  I don’t even know what else I might have done.  For thousands of years Heaven took my sins away from me and told me I was righteous.  I wish I had them back.”

Sam rolled his head to the side to look at Cas.  He wasn’t sure what Cas was confessing to, and he couldn’t decide if he felt sad, or pissed, or ashamed that he’d ever believed that he could be Galahad in a picture book.  “I don’t even know what that means.”

Cas wrapped his arm around Sam’s waist, and this time it wasn’t just to keep him upright. “Neither of us is clean.  At least you’re whole.”

“I can do this,” Sam said.  He wasn’t sure that he remembered anymore why it was important, what it was that made it different from the long, pointless climb up the stairs that unfolded in his head. He just knew that it was something he needed to do. “I will.”

“You can,” Cas said.  “You won’t if you’re dead.”

Sam grabbed for the bottle in Cas’s hand and missed.  He felt like a drunk. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.  Give me the goddamned water.”

Cas handed it to him and Sam tipped back his head and drained it.  His stomach clenched and he doubled over.  For an instant he thought he was going to retch it all up, but he locked his jaw and swallowed hard.  After a few seconds the feeling passed and he sank back against the tub and Cas’s supporting arm.

“This sucks,” Sam said to Cas’s collar.

“Yes,” Cas agreed.

 *********************************************************************************8

Sam didn’t so much wake up as abruptly become aware of his surroundings.  He was still leaning on Cas, but they were in Sam’s bed.  Sam wasn’t sure if he’d lost consciousness long enough to be carried there, or if they’d simply transitioned from the bathroom floor to his bedroom without any intermediate steps.

Cas peered down at him when he stirred.  “Dean prayed to me.  He said to tell you there were ‘an ungodly number of fucking rats,’ and that your next hunt was going to be at a clown convention.”  Cas hesitated.  “I’m not certain what that part meant.  But the children are safe.”

“He didn’t waste any time.”  Sam considered that.  “Wait, how long was I out?”

“Sixteen hours and thirty-two minutes.”

Sam had twined himself around Cas to an embarrassing degree, right arm around his neck, left leg halfway across his lap.  He thought about separating his head from Cas’s shoulder, but it didn’t seem worth the effort.  

“I’m feeling a little better,” Sam said.  Which was true.  His chest hurt and he was poised on the fuzzy edge of unconsciousness, but the net of pain had lifted from his head and the glow of light from under the door was blessedly silent.  Small favors.

 “You don’t need to stay,” he added after a moment.  The words were all Sam had to give.  He knew he should pull away.  He was a grown man, he didn’t need to be held.  But he felt truly warm for the first time in days, and he couldn’t find the will to let go.

Cas didn’t move.  Sam settled under the layers of blanket and trench coat, and felt sleep reach out for him again.  Cas wasn’t Dean, but at least someone else was breathing with him in the dark.  He was sick, and miserable, and he had stains on his soul that not even God could wash out, but when he closed his eyes he could almost believe that the hand on his back felt like grace. 


End file.
